The things that I've loved about TTRPGs that would be difficult to mimic in video games are character-driven but off-the-wall solutions. My mind goes back to a Blades in the Dark campaign where one mission involved our criminal gang shaking down tattoo parlors for protection money; we decided that we would pose as Municipal Health Department inspectors. When the GM clarified that the city didn't have a health department, we decided that our next heist would be to infiltrate city hall, occupy an empty office, and establish a health department — as cover for us. That's just the sort of responsiveness you can get in TTRPGs!
That said, my best GM experiences have involved some guardrails. The Star Trek Adventures system is easier to manage because all the player characters are Starfleet officers, and thus 1) are very unlikely to be chaotic and won't be evil (without severe narrative consequences), and 2) have sworn oaths to obey their superiors (NPCs you control — you can assign missions).
14:47 "I sang a sad song" "Why would you sing a sad song?" Keith Du Bois's Inland Empire: "No, no, don't sing the happy song, it's stupid. Sing the sad song, it's profound".
37:17 Something tells me I probably won't like whatever take Bird has about Baldur's Gate 3. I'm not saying it's a perfect game (for example, I've seen reasonable complaints about the romance system and how linear it is), but whatever shortcomings it has I just can't imagine those would be frustrating enough to make you quit it. There's only so much a hard-coded piece of software can do, but even considering those limitations, the game already has an insane amount of reactivity (it even caused other people in the industry to react negatively to it, because they don't want people to expect that's gonna be a new standard). The only way to have even more reactivity would be with AI, but then the new problem would be generating something that has a cohesive and coherent narrative from beginning to end. There are already people trying to use AIs as a (partial) substitute to human DMs (look up the article "Solo DM Guide Part 3 – ChatGPT as assistant AI Dungeon Master"), and one of the main limitations is the memory limit of roughly 3000 words (so at some point not everything that happened in the campaign will be taken into account for the generation of further content, which means continuity errors are bound to happen).
people telling toaster "okay well death of the author I disagree" after he tells them the motivations/reasonings of the character he was literally in the mind of is killing me 💀
This was a really good talk on freedom afforded by rpg’s! It’s nice to see a lot of my frustrations with players who try to derail just because they have the freedom to do so being shared/talked about.
It’s also funny considering I just came off a video that argues that player agency is should be upheld above the campaign. I don’t fully agree that perspective, but it’s an interesting discussion nonetheless, and you all managed to approach said discussion in a really smart way!
Psst~ go watch Gnollplaying Games
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC1gwy6Cu89OYD3Ih5OVJ44g
You got that grich
Narrative agency of conflict and consequences that are part of the zeitgeist that the group expects.
Will we ever see the corrupted "what if" forms of the cape escape characters?
Keith did rock band the way I did DDR, In The Groove and Stepmania
The things that I've loved about TTRPGs that would be difficult to mimic in video games are character-driven but off-the-wall solutions. My mind goes back to a Blades in the Dark campaign where one mission involved our criminal gang shaking down tattoo parlors for protection money; we decided that we would pose as Municipal Health Department inspectors. When the GM clarified that the city didn't have a health department, we decided that our next heist would be to infiltrate city hall, occupy an empty office, and establish a health department — as cover for us. That's just the sort of responsiveness you can get in TTRPGs!
That said, my best GM experiences have involved some guardrails. The Star Trek Adventures system is easier to manage because all the player characters are Starfleet officers, and thus 1) are very unlikely to be chaotic and won't be evil (without severe narrative consequences), and 2) have sworn oaths to obey their superiors (NPCs you control — you can assign missions).
14:47 "I sang a sad song" "Why would you sing a sad song?" Keith Du Bois's Inland Empire: "No, no, don't sing the happy song, it's stupid. Sing the sad song, it's profound".
37:17 Something tells me I probably won't like whatever take Bird has about Baldur's Gate 3. I'm not saying it's a perfect game (for example, I've seen reasonable complaints about the romance system and how linear it is), but whatever shortcomings it has I just can't imagine those would be frustrating enough to make you quit it. There's only so much a hard-coded piece of software can do, but even considering those limitations, the game already has an insane amount of reactivity (it even caused other people in the industry to react negatively to it, because they don't want people to expect that's gonna be a new standard). The only way to have even more reactivity would be with AI, but then the new problem would be generating something that has a cohesive and coherent narrative from beginning to end. There are already people trying to use AIs as a (partial) substitute to human DMs (look up the article "Solo DM Guide Part 3 – ChatGPT as assistant AI Dungeon Master"), and one of the main limitations is the memory limit of roughly 3000 words (so at some point not everything that happened in the campaign will be taken into account for the generation of further content, which means continuity errors are bound to happen).
people telling toaster "okay well death of the author I disagree" after he tells them the motivations/reasonings of the character he was literally in the mind of is killing me 💀
This was a really good talk on freedom afforded by rpg’s! It’s nice to see a lot of my frustrations with players who try to derail just because they have the freedom to do so being shared/talked about.
It’s also funny considering I just came off a video that argues that player agency is should be upheld above the campaign. I don’t fully agree that perspective, but it’s an interesting discussion nonetheless, and you all managed to approach said discussion in a really smart way!